What Does Judges 15:7 Mean?
And Samson said to them, Though you have done this, yet I will be avenged on you, and after that I will stop.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.THE KEY
Samson makes retaliation the price of stopping: the violence ends only after he has answered injury with injury.
THE MEANING
Vengeance appears here as a promised answer to injury, with stopping placed on the far side of repayment. The line leaves the violence plain: the harm is not healed or undone; retaliation is what Samson names before he will cease. It shows how an ending can be made conditional on striking back.
THE ROOT
נִקַּמְתִּי
niqqamtî
GROWS FROM
נ־ק־ם
n-q-m
To avenge, to exact a response for injury.
“be avenged” in this verse is niqqamtî. The Hebrew verb belongs to the same root family as the noun for vengeance and the word for an avenger, joining the act, its claim, and the one who carries it out. Here, stopping comes only after that act; the sentence makes cessation depend on retaliation, not restoration.
ALSO GROWS
nāqām: Vengeance or revenge.
נָקָם
The noun names the repayment Samson promises to carry out before he stops.
neqāmāh: Vengeance; an act of retaliation.
נְקָמָה
This form keeps the focus on vengeance as an action that can be pursued, not simply a feeling.
nōqēm: An avenger; one who takes vengeance.
נֹקֵם
This branch names the person who enacts the same claim Samson makes in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Retaliation presents itself as closure, yet its measure can multiply beyond the injury it answers.
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy and sevenfold.You shall not avenge, nor hold a grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but give room to wrath. For it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will give back, says the LORD.THE THREAD
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy and sevenfold.The same Hebrew root, נ־ק־ם (n-q-m), underlies “avenged” in both verses. Genesis turns vengeance into an escalating measure, sevenfold, then seventy and sevenfold, so Samson’s promise to stop after retaliation sits inside a pattern where payback can multiply instead of settle.
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